Health: First human death linked to avian flu in the United States

A first human death linked to avian flu has been recorded in the United States, health authorities in the state of Louisiana announced on Monday, specifying that it was an elderly patient who suffered from other pathologies.

This patient, aged over 65, was the first serious case of human contamination with the H5N1 virus detected in the United States. He was hospitalized for a respiratory illness and was in “critical condition”, health authorities reported in December, at the time of the media coverage of his hospitalization.

He had “contracted the H5N1 virus after being exposed to backyard birds and wild birds,” the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) recalled on Monday.

“Low” overall risk

“LDH’s extensive public health investigation has not identified additional cases of H5N1 or evidence of person-to-person transmission. This patient remains the only human case of H5N1 in Louisiana,” he continues on his site.

For these reasons, the overall risk presented by avian flu for public health remains “low”, he believes. “People who work with birds, poultry or cows, or who are exposed to these animals in their leisure time, are at higher risk,” it says.

For several months, the United States has been facing an epizootic – the equivalent of an epidemic in animals – of avian flu. At the same time, 66 cases of bird flu in humans were detected in the country, the vast majority being mild. Others might have gone unnoticed.

Different virus version

Genetic sequencing showed that the H5N1 virus that infected the deceased patient was different from the version of the virus detected in several dairy cow herds and poultry farms.

And a small part of this same virus, found in the patient’s throat, presented genetic modifications suggesting that it would have mutated inside the body to adapt to human respiratory tract, the authorities announced at the end of December American sanitary facilities.

Other human deaths linked to the H5N1 virus have been recorded in the past in other countries, according to the WHO. Avian influenza A (H5N1) first appeared in 1996, but since 2020 the number of outbreaks in birds has exploded and an increasing number of mammal species have been affected.

Experts are concerned about the growing number of infected mammals, although cases in humans remain rare. They fear that high circulation could facilitate a mutation of the virus which would allow it to be transmitted from one human to another.

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